For years, the magic 400 km/h (249mph) mark was the holy grail of motoring performance, as the figure was achievable only in controlled high-speed runs by purpose-built cars, but nowadays things are a little different.
When Bugatti said the Veyron was capable of going a tad beyond 400 km/h (249 mph), 11 years ago, it awed the automotive world. Even by today’s standards, there are just a few high-performance vehicles (production and race cars) that can achieve the impressive objective. A few bikes too.

Like the Kawasaki Ninja H2R, which Turkish professional motorcycle racer, Kenan Sofuoglu, used it to go from 0 to 400 km/h (248 mph) in 26 seconds on the İzmit Bay Bridge.

The Red Bull rider reckoned that the 2,682 m (8,799 feet) long construction, located at the Gulf of İzmit along the eastern end of the Sea of Marmara, was the perfect venue to host his top speed run, and after preparing for four months, he was ready to take the non-street legal H2R to its full potential.

With 308 horsepower in “standard” and 326 horsepower (243 kW) with ram air, the supercharged H2R track-only variant has 50% more power than the fastest street-legal bikes, exceeding any production motorcycle’s top speed by quite a big margin – as you’ll see in the video – hitting 400 km/h (248 mph) with ease, contrary to what Kawasaki thought:

“When I asked for the motorcycle, Kawasaki said its maximum speed was 380 km/h and that their dream was to reach 400km/h. The first time I rode it, I felt its huge power and speed, and I made small changes to the motorcycle – keeping its original settings – and did not modify it. I reached 390 km/h in my last trials and today I beat this and reached 400 km/h”, Sofuoğlu said to WorldSBK.

As ISIS just bombed the busiest airport in Istanbul, causes 44 dead and many wounded; the government is into mambo jambo business of opening the bridge with lots of celebration and show; just like this one…
They act like attack was never happened, and close down investigations; as they are directly the cause; with their monkey business went on with ISIS for the last few years…

Kagan

Hope they get you next time monkey

blasphemermantis

How old are u? 9?

stallion999

Brussels airport and many other places were attacked as well, what’s your point !

blasphemermantis

As the “speed record” was the news here; I want to add what politically lies beneath this event; for the politically interested ones.

This speed record was a part of a bridge opening event; which turned into a showdown of turkish government, intending to chase media attention away from the ISIS attacks in the airport 2 days ago.
The government built direct relations with ISIS for a long while; openly smuggle weapons; curing the wounded ones; all documented. As it backfired nowadays; they are trying to act like nothing happened, to draw public attention away from the explosion. Only 2 days after the explosion, none of the government members went to the blast zone, but all were making celebration in the bridge. President; didn’t name the word ISIS, not even once, after the explosion.
Can you imagine Belgium or any other government leader who can make this much exaggerated celebrations just 2 days after a giant bomb attack in their biggest airport caused 45 death?

Any decent record run should be done in 2 directions to exclude effects of inclination or wind.
+ They only showed that his stock speedometer just touched 400 mark. Everyone knows that stock speedometers are over-optimistic, so practically it means that his speed could have been even 10% lower.

So how does 360 km/h run downhill along the wind sound to you? They did not prove anything more than that.

smartacus

excellent points!
You are correct about the run needing to be repeated in the opposite direction
(and within an hour of the first leg too)

You are also correct about the speedometer error.
All bikes have them and they are not small errors either.
10% off 400kph is indeed 360kph or 222MPH

Kevin Tay

so do every other vehicles. how would you justify that the Chiron can do 0-100 in <2.5 seconds?

smartacus

Your question ranks up there with the elocutious “if the black box is indestructible, why don’t they make the whole airplane out of that stuff”

The indicated speed in a Cherokee (much less a Chiron) is closer to true groundspeed than the H2R’s indicated speed. No i will not take up a page-long reply to summarize why.

alan

its not a land speed record kind a try, what you saying is correct
those kind of tries done in America, cuz salt flats in utah 🙂
this is just a see bike’s capability, nothing else